Working to Save the Iraqi Marshes

After the US-led invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, there were many stories of Iraqis around the globe wanting to go back home to help rebuild their country. One of them was Azzam Alwash.

He left Iraq in 1978 and settled in the United States. In 2003, Alwash went back. He wanted to restore the Mesopotamian Marshes, a formerly rich wetland habitat in southern Iraq about the size of Connecticut.

Alwash grew up near the marshes and used to accompany his father, a government water engineer, on trips there. In the 1990s, Saddam had the wetlands drained, in retaliation for a rebellion in the south. When he read about it, Alwash was stunned.

He says it was like draining the Florida Everglades except that the Iraqi marshes are twice as big.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: After the US-led invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, there were many stories of Iraqis around the globe wanting to go back home to help rebuild their country. One of those Iraqis was Azzam Alwash. He was living in California. He’d left Iraq in 1978. In 2003, he went back. He wanted to restore the Mesopotamian Marshes. Those marshes used to be a rich wetland habitat in southern Iraq. They are about the size of Connecticut. Alwash grew up near the marshes. His father was a government water engineer and they took trips there together. Years later, rebels living in the Iraqi marshland rose up against Saddam Hussein. In the 1990s, Saddam retaliated and he had the wetlands drained. When Azzam Alwash read about this in California, he was stunned. He says it was like draining the Florida Everglades, except that the Iraq marshes are twice the size. It took Saddam a lot of work back then.

Azzam Alwash: Between ’92 and ’95, literally every piece of equipment, literally every piece of equipment that was available in Iraq, was used in the hugest engineering project to excavate six major rivers, and to build thousands upon thousands of miles of embankments surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates tributaries, to basically, essentially, deprive the marshes of its source of life — the water of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And the reason for that, as advertised, was basically to recover agricultural land. We all knew that the marshes were the refuge of the rebels, and they have been so since Babylonian times. Essentially it was to deprive the resistance of a place to operate from.

Mullins: What have you done to try to turn things around and get water rerouted to the marshes? A huge project.

Alwash: Heh, heh, heh. It was the people of the marshes that restored the marshes. It was the people themselves that breached the dykes and allowed the water to come back in, even before I [xxx] back in Iraq in June 2003. Even before Baghdad fell, the first embankments were breached by people of the marshes. They did that because they wanted a way of life — they wanted to return to their way of life. You see, in these marshes, people had lived and integrated with their environment for ever. Ladies and gentlemen, this is sustainable living exemplified. This is where mankind had lived for 7,000 years, in harmony with the environment. My contribution, if there is any, really is limited to using my scientific knowledge — which I of course gained in the United States — to help these people bring about a sustainable way of life, given that the natural flow of the Tigris and Euphrates is not controlled by them. I am happy to report to your listeners that water from the Tigris is now heading to the central marshes. The central marshes, instead of drying in the summer as they usually do, are increasing in size as we speak. We may very well go back to about 50 percent restoration[?], which, between you and I, is the maximum I can hope for without implementing a revolutionary irrigation modernization program all over Iraq.

Mullins: So have the people of the marshes returned, and have the bird species returned? More wildlife?

Alwash: Indeed. Look, now we have about 120,000 people who have come back, that are living off of the marshes. Honestly, I don’t want any more people to come back because as it is, they are all but stretching the environment. It’s not ready to take on that much harvesting. You talk about the birds. I have a picture on our website showing 43,000 — and we counted in the picture — 43,000 marbled teal, a threatened species and the world known population before this picture was taken was only 25,000. So in one picture, we show that the spirit is doing pretty darn well. The marshes are back on their way to being a resting place for the migrating birds between Africa and Siberia, and so on. This is a multi-decade project: This is probably a multi-generation project. Our duty is to sustain these marshes and keep them alive for our children and grandchildren to appreciate, for the world to come see where mankind started.

Mullins: Good luck, Dr. Alwash.

Alwash: Thank you so much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.